Diving Tenerife with Los Gigantes Diving Centre, Tenerife’s first PADI 5 Star IDC Centre, offers year-round quality scuba diving, diving courses and high safety standards in a spectacular setting, Los Gigantes, the most beautiful corner of Tenerife.

Diving Tenerife

With

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Boats Moored Across the road from the dive centre Entrance
Unlike most other dive centres on Tenerife, we do not put you in a mini bus & drive you several kilometres to a shore dive or to another dive centre. Our boats are 40 paces away from our entrance. Weightbelts are kept on the boat, further reducing the workload.

Boats never left unattended at anchor
In compliance with Spanish law & to provide our dives with full safety cover, our boats are always manned whilst divers are in the water. The practice of leaving a boat unmanned during a dive has resulted in incidents in other parts of the island - be careful who you choose to dive with!
The skipper is fully licensed as well as being a qualified diving instructor, trained in rescue & oxygen administration.

Oxygen & first aid kit carried at all times
Although it has never been used, in an emergency it is no use having the O2 kit back in the dive centre - on the boat is where it should be. We do have second O2 kit in reserve.

Dives Guided By A Fully Qualifed Instructor
He is there to help & assist with minor problems & to navigate underwater so that you see the best of the dive sites.

Storage Space Available In The Dive Centre
You do not want to carry heavy dive bags around everywhere, after all you are on holiday.

Children & diving:
Children under the age of 16 must have a diving parent or guardian with them at all times. Please click here for further information.

"Nothing bad is likely to happen (whilst diving) unless you go out of your way to help it"

Dave Barry - Blub Story

These are a few of the dives on offer at Los Gigantes Diving  Centre, Tenerife. The diving takes place from boats, either a wooden hard boat or a 6 metre RIB. There are about 20 different diving sites to choose from & more yet to be discovered. We try to give divers as wide a variety as possible during their time with us but choice of dive site depends upon conditions & the requirements of the diving group as a whole.

Try Dives

For the complete beginner, Los Gigantes Diving Centre offers a "try dive" session (see notes on age) costing € 55. Usually conducted around midday by prior arrangement, equipment is issued at the dive centre followed by an in depth brief with the instructor. A short boat trip takes us to a shallow bay beneath the cliffs where the dive starts in 2 - 3 metres water depth. If all goes well, we may reach a depth of 6 metres. This session is closely supervised, with no more than 2 beginners per instructor, it is also weather dependant, the sea must be very calm as wave action makes the session impossible to do safely.

Sea Horses discovered on popular dive site these beautiful but elusive creatures live among seaweed & adapt colour & form to match their surroundings. For this reason they are very difficult to find. The staff at Los Gigantes Diving Centre now know where to find them with reasonable success although, as with any wild creature, sightings cannot be guaranteed. Small groups of divers can be taken to see them but we aim to keep the disturbance of them to a minimum.

At the end of November 2005 they disappeared, it seems that they migrate to deeper water for the winter months. After several weeks spent regularly checking, they reappeared on the 22nd of May 2006.

Richard on Las Cuevitas

Las Cuevitas, meaning the small caves, is an interesting dive site for all levels of experience. Being volcanic in origin, Tenerife & the cliffs of Los Gigantes contain a number of caverns, some of which are interesting & safe to explore. The diving site is situated beneath the massive cliffs of Los Gigantes, a max. depth of 16 metres makes it an ideal second dive. A platform of rock drops from 6 to 16 metres and is heavily undercut with a series of small caverns. These are safe to enter - at no time are you out of sight of the entrance. Stingrays and lobsters are often seen inside, along with moray eels and a variety of other fish. Normally, divers enter the water at one end of the formation, traverse its length and the boat picks them up at the other end. Sometimes a current can allow a good drift dive.

African Striped Grunts beneath the arch

Barranco Seco, another example of the volcanic origin of Tenerife. This diving site can be dived deep or shallow. It consists of a rock slope down to about 35 metres where many gardener eels and a large shoal of grunts can be seen. The entrance to a small tunnel lies in 28 metres, it is safe to swim through and exit at 24 metres to make a gradual ascent up the slope to find the boat at anchor. A volcanic arch at 10 metres makes a perfect scenic end to the deeper dive and is a dive in itself for the less experienced.

Andy & the Giants Causeway
Atlantis is a triangular platform of basalt rock consisting of hexagonal columns, a giants causeway here in Tenerife! Some of the colunms have fallen away from the main formation so that it resembles the ruins of an ancient city - hence the name Atlantis. The boat anchors on top of the formation in 15 metres depth, the divers descend the anchor rope, then down the sides of the rock to around 25.metres. As well as breathtaking scenery, there is a great variety of fish life and red and yellow gorgonias, the area offers outstanding background and scenery for the underwater photographer.

Diver & Black Coral

Masca Bay is approx. 30 minutes north of Los Gigantes by boat, beneath the spectacular cliffs. The site consists of a drop off, the top of which is at about 25 metres, where we anchor. The wall, at this point, plunges shear to 48 metres where we find the entrances to 2 small caves. Swallowtail sea perch & fangtooth morays can be seen here by the observant & the wall itself is covered with black coral. Looking into open sea, large jacks or baracudas can often be seen. Due to the depth & the impossibility of a multilevel profile, diving this site is restricted to divers who are very experienced with depth, bouyancy control & decompression procedures, computers are a must. This dive is not for the inexperienced diver!

Robertos Reef is an extensive and confusing area of lava, the top of which is 15 - 19 metres deep. A narrow gully drops down to 32 metres, where many fish congregate. The walls offer housing to moray eels and 2 large groupers are regularly seen here. At the end of the gully stands a large rock where stingrays often congregate, the point at which we turn around and head back to the anchor.

Shoal of Bream

Punta Blanca, one of the most spectacular diving sites on Tenerife, is a must for experienced divers visiting the area. The reef drops from 12 metres, on top of which we anchor the boat, to 22 metres at the base of the wall. From here we move away from the wall, to an area of boulders at a maximum depth of 28 metres,where several large blocks of stone are the meeting place for large shoals of Grunts & several different species of Bream - moray eels, stingrays and triggerfish are regularly seen here. The base of the wall is deeply undercut and at one point, Red Gorgonias can be seen. The nature of the rock formation makes it an excellent multi-level dive. The underwater photographer and naturalist will be reluctant to leave this site.

One of the regulars

Los Chuchos is the spanish name for the stingrays, this is one of the most popular diving sites on Tenerife created by Los Gigantes Diving Centre & featured in several magazine articles. Some of our customers have dubbed this site ¨Stingray Village¨, why go all the way to Cayman Brac when you can have the same thrill on Europe´s doorstep. The diving centre manager, Nev Widdrington, established the site at the beginning of 1996 & has since developed it so that now, large numbers of stingrays and eagle rays are attracted & will gently take food from the hand of a diver. A video of the dive, filmed by the guide, is a popular souvenir of Tenerife, as are photographs like the one above taken by request of the diver in the background. As many as 6 different species of Ray have been seen in one dive & occasionally we are blessed by a visit from a rare & elusive Bull Ray. The nature of the site means that large pelagics and predators such as barracuda, jacks and tuna are also frequently seen - who knows what may make an appearance!!! A depth of 18 -20 metres makes it a site suitable for all qualified divers with recent experience. Click on http://www.the-deep-blue.co.uk for a photo gallery of this dive, taken by Clive Francis using an Olympus 920Zoom with an Olympus dive case.

One of the locals

Octopus Cove - Tenerife offers fantastic opportunities for macro phtography. The diving site is just a 10 min. boat ride from the marina of Los Gigantes & is a beautiful little bay beneath 400 metre high cliffs. One side of the bay is defined by a reef which is covered in sponges, corals and anemones, and is surrounded by shoals of fish. As the base of the wall lies in 12 - 15 metres depth, background light levels are high and colours strong - it is difficult for the photographer to leave this site.

Reservations
Please enquire about availability, click on and download our booking form (word document), complete the form and send, to Los Gigantes Diving Centre (address is on the form or email). You will be then be sent a confirmation of the booking.

All photos & web design © Nev Widdrington unless otherwise credited